


Old to Begin

by Mosca



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie's pushing 40 and a newly single dad; Jeremy's a whole new man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old to Begin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosepetalfall](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=rosepetalfall).



> Thanks to Thistle for beta reading. Written for [Wouldn't It Be Nice: A 2012 Worlds Commentfic Meme.](http://mosca.livejournal.com/437788.html) Title is from a Pavement song.

It didn't count as a divorce because Charlie and Tanith had never gotten married. They'd meant to, but it had never seemed like a good year for a wedding. And law school had made Charlie suspicious of anything bound by a contract. And maybe they'd known in their bones that they wouldn't be forever. Sixteen years was pretty good, right? A solid commitment to push through the bad times until he'd realized bad times were all they had left. He'd moved out quietly, and neither of them had asked for much. They'd fought so hard for everything, all their lives, and now they were exhausted.

He had primary custody of their daughter. Tanith traveled so much, reporting from the sidelines of meets and championships all over the world, that she'd agreed to the arrangement mournfully but without resistance. Arya was nine. She played hockey and resented moving from Detroit to L.A. Neither Charlie nor Tanith had worked in Detroit for a long time, but they'd kept up the travel and email-commuting to hold their family together, not that they'd succeeded anyway.

It was weird to live a couple of miles away from Meryl again. She'd moved to California right after they'd retired, seduced by one of the big-money figure skating clubs to build up their ice dance program. Meryl made a great facsimile of a Russian skating coach; she could whip from smiles and hugs to a terrifying scowl in a split second. The same rink had tried to lure Charlie, too, but he'd followed through on a noble promise to himself: law school, then sports management, keeping kids with no life skills from getting sucked into bad endorsement deals. His nickname in the industry was Batman, and he hadn't even started it himself.

"We should do some shows again," Charlie told Meryl when she and her husband had him over for dinner. "For old time's sake."

"Get the old gang back together? Charlie, you really _are_ taking this hard."

But they made plans to skate together again, and when they did, it felt natural, like they'd spent no time away. They weren't as fast as they used to be. His back was shot, and her hips were stiff. It didn't matter. The kids who'd paid to practice at the 6 AM crack-of-dawn ice dance session sat in the bleachers to watch them. Once you wore Olympic gold around your neck, you never took it off.

"Let's put on a show," Meryl said in the lobby.

It was easy to get people on board for a charity show, especially when Meryl knew all the top coaches and Charlie's firm managed most of U.S. figure skating. They brought in a healthy roster of current stars, but the best phone calls were to old friends: Alex and Maia, Alissa, Ryan. "It's going to be like the opening scene of _Follies_ ," Meryl crowed. Charlie had known her for thirty years, and he still had no idea what she was talking about sometimes.

Nobody was more excited about the show than Jeremy Abbott. He was in such high demand as a choreographer that Charlie was sure he'd send his regrets, but instead, Jeremy poured himself into the project. He was flying down from San Francisco this weekend to help with the planning. He wanted to choreograph a program for Meryl and Charlie. "I kept thinking we'd get around to it," Jeremy said on the phone, "but we never got the chance."

"I guess we've got it now," Charlie said.

Charlie was circling the passenger pick-up zone at LAX when Meryl called in a fit of mommy panic. "Bianca threw up at pre-school, I have to go run and get her, I don't know how late I'm going to be, I don't want to leave her if she's not okay, so either I'll bring her to the rink or I'll get one of my skaters to sit for her, but I'll be there, tell Jer not to worry, he came all this way, and I don't want to be all, sorry, barfy kid, go back to San Francisco." Meryl's version of panic was one long, soft-spoken sentence that Charlie would never dare to interrupt. He told her to keep him posted, and that it would be fine. It had to be, because he'd taken a personal day for this, and he couldn't spare a second one.

Charlie crawled back into the airport loading zone and saw Jeremy waving frenetically. Jeremy still had that goofy, graceful energy, every movement communicating a whole story. Time had been kind to him, tracing lines and angles into his face. He'd dyed his hair blond. When Charlie complemented him on it, he raked a veiny hand through it and said, "Yeah, I was getting all these grays and I decided, it's just going to be whatever color I want it to be." It seemed like he still didn't realize how he looked to other people, that it was hard to look away from him.

Charlie explained Meryl's barfy kid situation, and Jeremy cracked up. "This was all really just a ploy to see her family," Jeremy said. "I haven't even _met_ the baby yet."

Charlie choked back a laugh. "The baby's two and a half years old."

"I _know._ I can't get away. People keep _hiring_ me."

"Tough life," Charlie said.

"You give things up." Jeremy paused, like he wasn't sure whether it was fair for him to go on. He seemed to take Charlie's silence as permission. "I can't keep a boyfriend for more than a few years. I moved all the way to San Francisco to keep the last one, and it still fell apart. I wanted that more than I wanted the career - the husband, the house, and the kids. But I guess you get what you get."

"You have time." Charlie dealt the false reassurance without believing it. It was what people kept telling him when they found out he and Tanith had broken up. _Don't worry. You'll fall in love again. You're still young._ As if they knew about secret pockets of time he hadn't discovered. As if falling in love solved anything.

"I don't know. I'd be pushing sixty when they graduated from high school. It's like, you hit forty, and you see all the things that just aren't part of the journey this time around." Jeremy cracked a sad smile. "I just live vicariously through other people's kids."

Forty was an arbitrary number. Charlie hoped he was hitting the crisis point a couple of years early. Otherwise, it meant things got worse.

"Well, if you want to live vicariously through Arya's hockey match later, let me know," Charlie offered. "It's her first one with her new team, and she could use the cheering section."

Jeremy didn't respond with unbridled enthusiasm, so Charlie guessed he'd be a solo hockey dad tonight.

Inevitable L.A. traffic meant they got to the rink a few minutes after the start of the afternoon ice dance session. Charlie and Meryl had been going to the early morning session, before work, which was actually more crowded, because it was the one kids went to before school. Only the skaters with hardcore talent or hardcore delusional stage parents did a 2 PM session. Or washed-up former Olympians who'd taken the day off.

Jeremy put on his skates, but he hung by the boards while Charlie warmed up. He told Charlie to improv to whatever was playing over the PA. "I like to get a sense of how a skater moves before I give them steps," Jeremy explained.

"I'm not really good at that," Charlie said. "Usually, people tell me what to do, and I do it."

Jeremy made a lopsided, uncertain face. "But I _am_ telling you what to do." That face held a different meaning than it had when Jeremy had been an insecure kid. He was the choreographer, and he was in control. Charlie was the goofy one, for questioning him.

The PA was playing high-energy warm-up music, silly old songs, disco and '80s pop, chosen by coaches rather than skaters. Donna Summer faded into Hall and Oates, "You Make My Dreams Come True." Charlie picked up the rhythm of the song, not going for its content, just chaining turns and edges to the feel of the music. He knew he was overexerting himself, and his chest stung. But he kept moving - not because he feared Jeremy would yell at him, but because Jeremy would give up on him.

In the middle of the song, someone switched to their program music. "Con te Partirá": some cliches never went out of style. Charlie glided operatically back to the boards. Jeremy gave Charlie no feedback on his performance, although he'd been taking notes on his tablet. He only said, "Thanks, that gives me a pretty good idea," before pulling Charlie into a sloppy waltz hold and whisking him back onto the ice. Charlie'd barely had a moment to gulp water.

"Let me lead," Jeremy said. Charlie couldn't imagine another option. Skating on his own made him want to be in someone's arms - not in a sexual way, but for moral support. That was why it hadn't worked when he'd tried to skate with Tanith for fun: too much sex, not enough support. Maybe that was why they hadn't worked in general.

Jeremy's eyes locked with Charlie's as Jeremy glided him to the boards. Jeremy still had that off-kilter smile. A little attraction couldn't be a bad thing.

They were back to waltzing when Meryl caught up with them. Despite her frantic afternoon, her hair was perfect, the sick kid nowhere to be seen. Her impeccability was an unanswerable challenge to the other working parents of the world. It was that exact quality that had brought them all their medals. Imperfection wasn't something she accepted.

Meryl sprinted across the ice to them in a blur of back crossovers and stole Charlie out of Jeremy's hold. "I'm never leaving you two alone again." She approved the cheesy Hall and Oates song, and by the end of the practice session, they'd outlined a cute number for the show. They focused on the elements they could still perform confidently: footwork and turns, with easy lifts to save Charlie's back. Choreographing this new program made him bitterly nostalgic, craving the moves that his body no longer obliged.

Meryl offered to take Jeremy to his hotel after they'd finished skating, but Jeremy asked Charlie, "Didn't you invite me to stick around for your daughter's hockey game?"

"Oh. You don't have to do that."

Jeremy shrugged. "It's good for a kid to have a cheering section."

He didn't realize what he was in for. They had to pick Arya up from school, bring her home for a quick snack, gather her hockey gear, and return to the rink. Several of these steps involved mind-boggling traffic, and along with it a lot of time in the car. Their conversations kept teetering on the precipice of awkwardness, and Charlie worried that the 405 would push them over the edge.

Jeremy gave the awkwardness a shove before they'd reached the highway ramp. "I'm sorry about you and Tanith. Meryl told me a little more. I hope it's okay that I brought it up - and no, I'm realizing it isn't."

"It's fine," Charlie said. "I just don't know how to react to people feeling sorry for me."

"Me neither. I mean, I've been in a few relationships, and some of them ended angry, and some just ran their course, but it's never like - I mean, it's always starting fresh. You get to be someone new."

"I like that," Charlie said. He was playing around with the music. Thousands of songs, and nothing sat right. He knew what that meant, what that always meant: he was distracting himself. He didn't want to drag himself back into thinking about Tanith. He didn't want to refuse to be someone new.

The last time she'd kissed him, it had been mundane. It hadn't felt like a last kiss. They'd been in the car, this car, when he'd dropped her off at the airport. The last time he and Tanith had made love, he'd known it wouldn't happen again: on the couch after Arya had gone to bed, her pleading eyes, his acquiescence though his heart wasn't in it. He remembered it in retina-burned photographs. But that last kiss - he hadn't had a clue.

He was ready for another kiss. It was presumptuous to think he might get one now, and a crazy rebound impulse he'd regret. He rationalized: it wouldn't actually be a safety risk at their current five miles an hour. But the more he suppressed and ridiculed the impulse, the more intense the fantasy grew, until he was fighting off the mental image of Jeremy bent over the hood of his car in the middle of the stalled 405. Fucking him in front of the captive audience of commuters in the otherworldly California sunlight.

Now Charlie was stuck in traffic with Jeremy and an erection. His instincts told him to let it go. But with nothing to do but stare at the unmoving cars or stare at Jeremy, logic kicked in. He'd been single for six months and out of love with Tanith for years longer. He'd been doing penance for the failure of his relationship. He was _allowed_ to make a move. And if anyone would turn him down gently, it was Jeremy.

Charlie had gotten so good at being brave for other people. But doing it for a living had made him hate the effort of being brave for himself.

Charlie cleared his throat. Jeremy sat up straight, as if he'd been caught in an untoward act. "Maybe I'm wrong about this," Charlie began, inauspiciously. "But we had a spark there, back on the ice. I think there's something between us, or there could be. If you wanted. If we wanted."

Jeremy was quiet for a long moment, until Charlie began to worry it would be an interminable car ride followed by never speaking full sentences to each other again. But Jeremy said, "Are you asking me out?"

"Ineptly. Yes."

"Can we go to Disneyland?" It was not a question that Charlie had prepared for, although he honestly had not prepared for any of the questions.

"Sure," Charlie said. "We can bring Arya. I still haven't taken her, and she keeps asking."

"Well, if you're going to bring your daughter, I have to kiss you now. Or we won't get the chance."

Charlie could barely keep his foot on the brake as Jeremy pulled him across the gear shift and into a kiss. He'd forgotten the rush of a first kiss, of these early moments when the emotions weren't sorted out yet. When kisses seemed like fresh inventions. This was the reward for old love falling apart: new love, or the possibility of it.

Charlie had not considered this: by the time a person reached forty, they'd learned how to kiss. Especially Jeremy with his string of heartbreaks, his sad history that Charlie now wanted to know and make up for. Jeremy's lips were dry but not too dry, his tongue insistent. His hands everywhere: tracing Jeremy's jaw and neck, back and chest, sticking in the tangled curls of hair that Charlie had not yet brought himself to shear off for good. Trailing down to Charlie's thigh, and Charlie remembered first that he had lived for thirty-eight years and never received a blow job in a moving vehicle, and remembered second that he was picking his daughter up from school. "Slow down," he said. "It's hard enough to _kiss_ and drive."

Jeremy pressed his lips into Charlie's cheek before retreating. He placed Charlie's hand on top of the gear shift and held it there. "I guess we have time," Jeremy said.

"We have half our lives ahead of us." And before Charlie could interrogate that statement, or doubt it, the traffic began to clear.


End file.
